


Eventyr

by imminentinertia



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canon Character as Fairy Tale Creature, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 08:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13948134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imminentinertia/pseuds/imminentinertia
Summary: Once upon a time, humans knew about and feared the wights in the forest. Now the wights are all forgotten, and perhaps they have left their hills and trees and ponds.Perhaps some are still there.





	Eventyr

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [colazitron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/gifts).



> Most fairytales have an element of darkness. This is no exception. There’s a water wight and it does what water wights do. There are deaths. Nothing is graphic and no canon characters die, promise.
> 
> This was written for the [Evakteket birthday challenge](https://evakteket.tumblr.com/post/169772863962/happy-birthday-to-us-okay-so-its-not-quite-our). My prompt was dusk or dawn, fairytale/mythology, AU.

 

He has no awareness of when he became.

He’s aware that the people who live on the soil become, that they are small and come out of the bodies of other, bigger people, and that they cease to be, in his home or on their own ground. He’s aware of that sort of becoming, but not his own. He sometimes wonders if he will ever cease.

He has no awareness of when he learned to play his guitar either. The people who live in the sunlight learn, they are taught, he has seen the bigger of them explain to the smaller ones how to open the soil near their homes and make plants sprout from it in tidy rows. He has seen the bigger ones give the smaller ones long bent branches and smaller, straight branches, the straight ones tipped with the metal he avoids because it hurts him. He has seen them teach the smaller ones how to fell the animals in the forest. He has learned that the long bent branches are called bows and the smaller branches are called arrows. He’s learned that the metal that makes him flee when it’s wielded against him is called steel.

He knows that they used to teach each other to throw steel at him when they saw him, and sometimes he fled, but other times their eyes glazed over when looking at him, and their arms would be lowered and the bits of metal would drop to the ground. He remembers the first time a piece of it hit his shape, how it burned, how a triumphant yell followed him into his home.

He has learned a lot of things from them, from watching them and from listening to them. He has learned a lot of things from the birds and animals in the forest. He can remember every thing he learned and how he learned it.

But the guitar was always there, he was never taught to play it, and he always knew how to strum it and make their eyes shine, especially the small ones, and the bigger ones heavy with tiny ones inside them, and the most beautiful of them. He’s always known how to play it to make them step into his home.

He sometimes wonders why he doesn’t cease when he walks on the ground, like they do when they enter his home.

He’s always in awe of how they constantly change, fluid as the seasons. From small to big, from smooth-skinned to wrinkled, from straight-backed and quick in their movements to bent and slow. He loves watching them, and will sometimes brave the sunlight filtering through the branches to sit on the ground close to their homes, looking at them work and play and listening to them talk. He prefers going when the sun has set, though. The time when they’re most active is the time when he feels he should be resting in his home. The sun doesn’t quite hurt him, but it’s not a friend to him either.

To be honest, he could do without them cutting down more and more of the forest around his home, but he’s also quite pleased that there are more and more people, and fascinated by how their homes change, like themselves. There was a time when there were long dark timber buildings, then smaller ones, and now there are taller houses in different colours. There are little enclosed spaces around them now, with flowers and fruit trees. The large fields of grain and plants are gone. Sometimes, when it’s dark and quiet among the people’s homes, he’ll walk close to the houses and pick a fruit from a tree, and put it in his shape’s mouth and bite it.

They’re sweet and juicy and they flood him with strange sensations, and he does like he’s seen the people who move on and work the soil do, he moves his shape’s teeth against the bits of fruit and makes them go inside him.

Somehow it’s difficult for him to go home after tasting a fruit or a berry. His home doesn’t quite welcome him, he can’t slide as easily in as he usually does. It takes a bit of effort, and that puzzles him.

He can remember when he started to think of himself as someone referred to as “he”, one sunny day when some of the not quite big ones were playing in his home. They were talking about “men” and “women” and “boys” and “girls”, taking their wraps off and comparing their shapes, pointing to between their legs where some had something dangling and others hadn’t.

When he steps out of his home he takes the shape of a “man”, not a “woman”, he can see that. If he bends over his home, not going back in, just looking at his reflection, he can see that his shape when he’s moving on the soil is fair-haired and blue-eyed like some of the people. When he has this shape, he has hands he can run through his hair and over his skin. He has hair and skin to touch. He enjoys that.

He’s not entirely sure if he has any sort of shape when he’s in his home. He simply feels like all of his home, his pond, _is_ him, and he’s nurtured there. He’s with his lilies, his frogs, his minnow and trout, and with his people who changed when they came to be with him. Sometimes when it’s cold his home closes, the surface turning hard, and he’s kept within. He doesn’t mind. He rests then, until the surface breaks up under the spring sun.

When he can step out, sometimes he doesn’t do it just because he wants to. There’s something that pulls at him, like the hooks that sometimes dangle into his home, enticing his fish. He doesn’t begrudge the people the occasional trout, but he thinks of those hooks when now and then he feels compelled to heave himself out, his guitar coming with him, his hand shaping itself around its neck as the air hits him.

He _needs_ to settle himself on the big rock by the east end of his pond, his guitar resting on his legs. He _needs_ to play it, for as long as it takes for a man or woman, or a small one, to come to him. When one does, he’ll play for a while, while the one of the people he’s called to him sits by his feet, listening raptly. The big ones will look at him like they look at each other when they come to his home two by two, to take the wraps they wear over their skin off and lie in the soft moss together. He plays for them, and looks back at them, a humming beneath what he has that looks like their skin.

Then he will stop playing. He will rise and step into his home. They always follow, movements slow but sure.

Once there, the people change. They become more like water, more like his home. They stay, for a while. Some of them he lets move up again, and other people fetch them from the surface of his home. Some he keeps, fastening them to the floor of his home with rocks so they won’t leave him.

Those who stay eventually change more. Their skin and flesh becomes part of his home, and they become what he’s heard is called bones. He likes the bones as much as he likes the people when they are clothed in their skin, but there’s no denying that they’re very quiet, and part of why he likes people so much is their sounds. The only sounds he makes himself are the tunes he plays on his guitar, and just a little rustling under his feet when he walks on the ground.

Eventually, the men and women and the small ones in his home sink into the mud and disappear. He doesn’t mind. They’re part of his home while they’re there, and then they’re not.

He also has a memory of finding out that each of the people who walk on the soil has a word that belongs to that person, and that each of them answers when another says that particular word. It’s called a “name”, and he was so taken with name-words that he decided he wanted one for himself. He listened carefully to the names, for a long time, and thought about Erling and Hild and Amund and Tora. He realised at some point that some name-words belonged to men and some to women, and since his shape is what it is, he settled for a name that’s used for boys and men. He heard it one day, when a woman called her little boy that word. He liked the sound of it, it’s like the smooth caress of the evening wind on his home.

_Even_.

He cannot utter the sounds of the name-word he’s decided is his, but for as long as there’s a boy - later a man - around their houses, and the others call out that name, he likes listening to it.

He likes listening to all the sounds and words they make. His home is very quiet and he is very quiet, unless he’s playing his guitar. The sounds of the forest and the people please him. Sometimes some of them have words the others don’t understand, and sometimes he tries to remember if he’s been unable to understand the words most of them use, but he has no awareness of that either.

This is his existence. His home, and the forest, and the people who live on the soil in the daylight - those he watches, and those he calls to him.

 

* * *

 

These are the first words a man who walks on the soil says to him:

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you!”

Even’s world tilts and spins, because this never happens. The people never see him, when he’s not playing his guitar. They never speak to him. They never just stand almost on top of his shape, where he’s lying on the moss.

This one does, however.

The man has fair curls and his lip has the shape of the bows they used in the forest, a great deal of waxing and waning moons ago. Looking at the lines of his jaw and his shoulders makes something shift within Even’s shape, something he’s never felt before, something entirely new.

Even can only lie there and stare, as the man glances at his shape, his cheeks turn pink and he takes a step back.

“Uh, sorry. I mean, I didn’t mean to disturb you, sorry. Uh, I’ll go away now.”

With a final _sorry_ he turns and disappears into the underbrush, his feet making crushing sounds.

Even lies completely still and silent.

He has no idea what to make of this. He turns his encounter with a man around and around in his thoughts, but he’s never had an experience he can compare to this, he doesn’t know what to think or do. At least the man didn’t throw steel at him to make him go away, although there was some steel on him, somewhere, Even could feel it.

He feels unsettled in the shape he wears outside his home, so he slips back in, but the water and the fish and the drifting stems of the water lilies don’t welcome him as they usually do. He finds no rest there. He can’t stop moving about, staring up at the sky, hoping that the man came here to go into his home to swim.

He has a word for the man, in his store of their words.

_Beautiful._

Even keeps mulling over how this has never happened before, ever since he became. Never before has one of the people even seen him, without him wanting them to see him. He very much wants this man to see him again, and that is entirely new too. He thinks carefully about every little detail of the too-brief meeting, how the man scurried away from him, and he wonders how he can make the man stay longer if they chance upon one another again. He wants to hear words spoken to him again, spoken by this particular man.

He decides that he should seem more like one of them, like someone one of people would speak to. They wrap their skin in soft things, _clothing_ , so he should too. Perhaps him wearing only skin was strange to the man.

So he leaves his home one night and goes looking around their houses, while they’re asleep. Noone has ever seen him watching them or picking their fruit before, but now it has happened that one of them has seen him without being called to his home by his playing, so he takes care not to run into any of them. The newness of being seen and spoken to is only for that particular man.

He finds what he wants on a line in a garden. Something to wrap his shape in, something that looks like what men cover themselves in. There’s nothing for the feet of his shape, like they usually have, but there’s something blue for the lower half of his shape and something white for the upper half, and both things can easily be pulled on. He struggles a little with the fastening on what he knows is called trousers, but he figures it out and makes the little round things go through the little holes so the trousers stay on his shape. Back at his pond, as the sun starts climbing the sky, he grabs onto a branch and leans out over the still water without going in, and he’s quite satisfied with the man-like result he sees reflected there.

He even wears the clothing for a while, getting familiar with the touch of the fabrics on his shape, before he pulls both things off. He folds them carefully, like he’s seen the people do when they come to swim, and tucks them away under his big rock.

The water pushes back at him when he tries to go in. For a moment he feels strangely unwelcome in his home, but he pushes back. The water yields and takes him in again.

After that, he takes to wearing the clothing whenever he’s out of his home. He’ll sit by his pond and think of nothing much - or of the man - watching the minnows and sometimes running his fingers over the folds of the clothes. The novelty of the fabric takes a long time to wear off.

He doesn’t mind struggling to get back into his home. It happens every time he’s worn the clothing. It becomes habit, like rising from his home and walking the forest in the dusk.

Sometimes he sees people by his pond, but he carefully avoids them, since none of them is _that_ man.

 

* * *

 

Once again, it takes Even completely by surprise one evening when a man emerges and nearly steps on him where he’s sitting under a big oak.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t see you.. wait, it’s you. Uh, I swear I’m not in the habit of nearly stepping on people.”

It’s _him_.

The word _beautiful_ is even more right for him than Even could remember. How could he forget exactly how gorgeous the shape of this man’s mouth is, how his shoulders are shaped, how his eyes have the colour of Even’s pond in spring evenings?

“Sorry, again, I’ll leave you to it…”

The man half turns, and everything in Even screams like the loons that come to his pond. He doesn’t want the man to go. He doesn’t know what to do, how to go about making the man stay, when he doesn’t have his guitar. The thought of playing for this particular man makes him stiffen, because while it’s right that there should sometimes come people into his home and stay there, they cease when they do so and he doesn't want this man to cease. He wants this man to continue being, and speaking, and looking at Even.

He makes some sort of small wave with one of his shape’s hands, pointing to the ground to show that the man can stay, and tries moving his shape’s mouth into a smile like theirs.

He’s quite surprised when it works, and the man turns back and sits down on the grass with him.

“I used to come here a lot to play when I was a kid. You like it here?”

Even realises that he didn’t consider what to do if the man spoke to him again. He doesn't have the sound of words like the people do, they exchange their words, trade them for words from other people. He can’t make that trade.

He looks away, wishing the man would just speak himself and not expect words in return, wishing he were back in his home and perhaps just watching this man from below.

He can’t keep from looking at the man for long, though, and when he has to, when his shape turns towards the man, he sees that the man’s brows pull together a little.

“I’m sorry if I’m being rude, but can’t you speak?”

Oh. No, he can’t.

“You don’t have anything to write on? Your phone, or something? A notebook?”

Even doesn’t know what to do. The words _write_ and _phone_ mean nothing to him. The only item he can think of for _notebook_ is a small green thing someone waved around and talked about and then forgot by his pond once. He liked touching it and moving the thin white leaves in it, the smoothness pleasing to the fingers of his shape, but the white leaves dissolved when he brought it into his home.

He has sometimes seen the people move their shoulders a little when they can’t seem to find words to offer back to someone speaking to them, so he does that.

It works. The man nods, he stays.

“I didn’t bring my phone either. Wanted some peace.”

He continues to talk about the beauty of the large pond, or is it a small lake, and the man discusses this with himself a little while Even thinks _the word I’d give it is pond_.

After a while, the man mutters something about having to go, and starts getting to his feet, and everything inside Even’s shape flails like a duckling hitting the water for the first time. Everything in him wants the man to stay, but Even knows of nothing he can do to make him keep sitting on the grass, talking.

One of his hands seem to move on its own accord, it pulls up a few leaves of grass and flick them over the man’s arm.

Even is fairly sure that’s not something the people do to each other. He’s never seen them do it. He doesn't know where it came from, he just did it. He tries making his mouth smile, hoping the man won’t find him too strange, too unlike the people.

The man smiles back at him and settles in again, folding his legs. He continues to offer Even his words, for a while, not expecting words in return. He sometimes glances at Even, the corners of his mouth turning up a little, his eyes roaming Even’s shape. All the while Even stares back, at every bit of the man’s body, and he tries to remember to smile.

More and more, the mouth of his shape seems to form the smiles without him having to make sure it does.

 

* * *

 

There’s someone in his pond, swimming in the dusk. Even idly looks to where he can feel his water moving and then goes very still, because it’s _the man_. He’s only wearing a small strip of fabric around his hips, his arms and legs move languidly. The sight of his bare chest and legs makes something move, not quite that languidly, within Even.

He’s quick to leave his home, near the big rock, slipping into his shape faster than he can remember having done ever before, hurrying into his clothing and then moving as quickly as his shape will go to the side of the pond where the man is just stepping back onto dry land.

Even halts, deliberately making a scraping noise with his feet like people do, which takes some effort from a silent being like himself.

The man looks towards him and a smile spreads on his face.

“Hey! You’re here often, are you?”

Even doesn't quite know what to do with that, so he settles for that little movement of his shoulders.

The man drops down on the grass and stretches out his legs, droplets of water running from his skin.

“Come sit down, eh? The water was great, lovely and cool, but there’s a bit of algae…”

He grimaces a little, brushing a wet leaf from his bare stomach, as Even sits down next to him.

“By the way, I didn’t introduce myself the last time. That was pretty rude.”

He smiles at Even again.

“I’m Isak.”

The man gives Even his name-word, and he starts to stretch his arm out towards Even, then he takes a look at his palm and grins.

“Maybe not shake hands when I’m this grimy. Sorry about the pond scum.”

Even is just staring, at Isak, who’s leaning comfortably back on his elbows. He cannot grasp all this, the man - _Isak_ \- almost touching him. There’s a feeling inside his shape’s head like dragonflies dancing on the surface of his home. He desperately wants to offer something to Isak, in return.

His shape has a mouth. He uses it to taste the people’s food. He has teeth in it, and what they call a tongue. Perhaps he could use it like the people do in other ways. He opens it.

These are the first words he says to a man:

“I’m Even.”

The sound he makes startles him, because it’s inside his shape as well as outside it, and it’s deep and a little raspy. But there it is. He made talk-sounds. He spoke the name he’s given himself and gave it to the man. To Isak.

At this point, he’s hardly even shaken by the novelty of it all.

Isak is, though. He’s staring at Even, his green eyes wide.

“You spoke! Fucking hell, man, I thought you couldn’t!”

Then he stills and tenses like a mouse hearing an owl at night, his eyes going even wider.

“Fuck, sorry! I didn’t mean any insult, I was just surprised, shit. Sorry!”

Even knows that this is the kind of moment where a man would speak words back, so he tries, again, digging up a phrase he’s heard them use that seems like something he could say now, moving the mouth and tongue of his shape.

“That’s okay.”

The planes in Isak’s face suddenly seem a little less rigid, and he smiles, widely, deep indentations showing in his cheeks.

“That’s amazing. Were you injured or something, are you re-learning? Have you had surgery, maybe?”

Even can only shrug his shoulders again. He doesn't know which words he should use now. Isak nods and shrugs as well.

“I’m just too curious, sorry.”

Isak pushes a wet tendril of hair back from is face, rubs his legs where more hair lies flat and damp and dark against his skin.

“The water’s pretty fucking cold, even now. I’ve been sweating away at work all day. I work in a garden centre this summer and they stuck me in one of the greenhouses most of the day. Do you work?”

Even is fairly certain the people don’t move their shoulders in this particular way all the time when talking, but he can’t think of anything else to do. He thought he knew a lot about the people, but he’s realising that he evidently knows very, very little.

“No matter, sorry, I keep asking you shit. You probably shouldn’t use your voice too much?”

Isak rubs his legs some more, wiping away the little traces of algae. Even stares, because every little bit of this man deserves the word _beautiful_. When he looks back at Isak’s face, Isak’s cheeks have turned a little redder, like the first time they met. He doesn’t know why skin changes colour like that, as if Isak had spent too much time in the sunlight and reddened because of that. Isak goes paler again quickly too, something Even has never seen someone with reddened skin do before.

Isak starts talking again, faster than before, about his work and plants and the heat, fingers pulling at the grass by his thighs, and Even listens, and looks, and makes sure to remember things Isak mentions that he wants to learn about.

Isak stops talking to pull his clothes on. Even pays particular attention to Isak’s long fingers doing something complicated with the strings on what he puts on his feet, because that is also something Even should learn. He should learn about everything the people do. Everything Isak does.

They sit in silence for a while after Isak sits back down, Even looks at Isak and Isak looks at the pond, and every now and then he glances at Even. Every now and then Even realises that they’ve nudged a little closer to each other on the grass, damp with the dew that’s fallen around them. Every now and then their eyes meet, and they smile. Isak talks a little again, and Even listens and looks.

Eventually, Isak gets to his feet, muttering something about having to go. Even stands up too, wondering if he could keep Isak here a while longer.

Or go with him.

The idea makes Even almost reel, that he could walk beside Isak to Isak’s own home, his house in the clutch of houses by the forest.

He can’t. He’s not the same kind of creature as Isak, as the people who walk on the soil. He must stay in his home.

Isak places his hand on the arm of Even’s shape, giving it a little squeeze and a pat, and says “I’ll see you around, maybe? I’ll probably come here to cool off all summer.”

This is the first time a man who walks on the soil touches him.

And Even, his shape suddenly as hot as the air during a forest fire, nods and opens the mouth of his shape to give Isak the words “I’ll come here, too.”

He stands looking after Isak disappearing into the forest, and Isak turns around once, lifting his hand and waving, before the dark branches hide him completely. Even moves slowly back to the big rock, and when he reaches it, finds himself reluctant to take the clothing off and go back into his home. He’d like to stay on the soil for a while longer, with Isak.

Isak has gone to his own home, though, so eventually Even pulls his clothing off and hides it as usual.

As he pushes himself into the water, his home as reluctant to accept him as he is to return, he hears a soft, low, sound, a sigh like the people will make, that makes him stop for a moment and look around for whoever is near. It takes him a few more moments to realise that it was his own shape pushing it out of its mouth, from deep within it.

 

* * *

 

He can feel it again, a warm night when it’s almost as light as in the day, the pull that makes him bring his guitar out of his home. The need to take his shape and to settle on the big rock, to make his shape’s hands play the strings. So he does. He listens to his own music and delights in it while he waits.

One of the people arrives, padding softly through the forest. Just as they should.

It’s Isak.

Even can’t stop playing. The hook in him that makes him bring them into his home makes him continue, even as _this should not be_ is what he feels. He doesn’t wish to make Isak change and cease. He wishes Isak to _be_ , and change in the usual rhythm of a man who never enters Even’s home, and cease when it’s his time, not now. Not because of Even’s playing.

But the hands of his shape keep moving over the strings, the music Even usually enjoys making suddenly cloying and sinister, the music that will make Isak’s sounds still.

Isak sits down on the grass in front of him, though, stretching out his long legs and leaning back, smiling. While Even plays, the look in Isak’s eyes changes. He starts looking at Even the way they always do, those of them that aren’t small, the look that they give each other when two of them are writhing on the ground together.

Something rises within Even’s shape, a yearning for this look not to mean that Isak will follow him into his home, a wish that Isak will take what he’s wearing off and lie on the grass with Even. He knows that this will end in Isak coming with him, that they won’t lie together. Even will play until Isak’s eyes see nothing, and Isak will cease.

Even can’t bear it.

The music softens and goes quiet, as it always does before they come with him.

Then Isak speaks.

“Is this a pastime of yours, playing the guitar naked by the pond? Not that I’m complaining. You’re good.”

Even can only stare. They never speak, yet Isak does. His eyes still have that look, they haven’t grown empty in his enthralment. Isak is too many novelties in an existence that’s always almost the same.

Another novelty is that Isak leans forward, not in the sluggish way they usually move, and speaks again.

“I can’t play any instruments. I could repay you by rapping, but I’m honestly not very good at it.”

He smiles up at Even, heat still in his eyes. Then he gets up, steps up to Even and plucks the guitar from his hands, settling it gently against the rock. Then Isak leans in, his eyes on Even’s, and presses his mouth to the mouth of Even’s shape.

Everything in his world shifts and swoops.

He’s standing up without knowing how his shape got there, his arms lifting and his hands landing on Isak’s arms.

This is the first time he touches a man who walks on the soil.

Isak pulls him in, wrapping his arms around Even and holding him tight, his mouth still pressed to Even’s. He opens his mouth and his tongue hits Even’s lips, and Even never had any idea that his shape could burn like this and hold and be held, but he opens his own mouth to Isak’s tongue. There’s a slight pain on his belly, and he realises it’s Isak’s steel belt buckle, but it’s of no consequence. The steel doesn’t really hurt him, like it used to when waved in front of him, at a distance. It doesn’t make him flee.

Isak makes a soft noise and pushes air into Even’s mouth, and startled, Even draws it into his shape, can taste Isak’s mouth and the air like the fruit he’d steal from the gardens, and everything shifts and swoops again.

He loses his footing, and as he falls backwards he grabs hold of what is under his shape’s hands, which happens to be Isak's shirt.

They both tumble into his home.

It's not his home now.

Instead of welcoming him in, dissolving his shape and making him one with the water, at once or after a bit of effort, it closes around him like he's one of the rocks the people toss in. It's the strangest thing, to feel his home around him like a cool wrap, to not become part of it. It’s a feeling he’s experienced before, but only for a moment, before his push against his home makes it yield and take him in. Now it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t give.

He can't even see very well. He's used to seeing clearly what his home is seeing, from the mud far below to the water lilies and the slice of sky. Now it's all murky.

There's something in the nose and the mouth of his shape, something very unpleasant and disturbing. His shape protests, there’s an ache inside him and he fleetingly remembers how the people splutter, spitting out water and making gaspy sounds when they heave themselves up from his home - his home that was? Not his home now.

He desperately wants to get onto dry land, more than he ever longed to get into his home, because dry land now seems to be the only place where he can be, but he’s helpless in the water. They’re sinking like those rocks, into the deeps that don’t welcome him anymore.

Then he feels Isak's arms tighten around him, the movement of Isak moving his legs. Isak is bringing them upwards.

They break the surface, together, and he heaves his first real breath ever, mouth close to Isak’s still.

He has become anew.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _Eventyr_ means fairytale in Norwegian.
> 
> Lots of thanks to [Himmelsky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/himmelsky/pseuds/himmelsky) and [Alene](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Alene/pseuds/Alene) who betaed this for me ♥
> 
> Lots of love to K and H ♥
> 
> The story is based on the Scandinavian/Germanic folklore creature Nøkken [(the Neck/Nixie)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_\(water_spirit\)), who lives in a pond and, usually after sunset, lures humans into his pond to drown them. Nøkken sometimes shows himself as a beautiful man, playing the violin or the harp. There are several ponds and small lakes near where Isak grew up, canonically, by the way. The tales about Nøkken are partly educational, to make children stay away from deep water, and partly therapeutical, to deal with grief when loved ones have drowned.
> 
> As to how Even, as Nøkken, becomes human in this fic, I borrowed the concept in reverse from Norwegian tales about a form of wight, de underjordiske (which translates into something like “those living below ground”). Living inside mountains, they lure humans inside, and once the human has eaten and drunk their food the human can’t escape the mountain. Also, I borrowed the kiss as something often hugely important and transforming in fairytales.
> 
> I'm [skamskada](https://skamskada.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Come say hi!
> 
> [heihallohadet](https://heihallohadet.tumblr.com)/[Hopetoseeyouagain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopetoseeyouagain/profile) made [this lovely edit](https://heihallohadet.tumblr.com/post/180385291436/these-are-the-first-words-he-says-to-a-man-im) for Eventyr ♥


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